


wearing your heart on your sleeve

by InsaneKAT



Category: Suits (TV)
Genre: Angst, Donna is all-knowing, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Jessica is scary, Louis is creepy as shit, M/M, Mike's avoidance skills, Somewhat domestic, adorable Mike, color swatches, gratuitous color porn, minor OC's - Freeform, mysterious identity, no happy ending, pining!Harvey, secrets and omission, slight reference to White Collar, so much color
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-06
Updated: 2015-07-08
Packaged: 2018-04-07 23:23:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,429
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4281921
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InsaneKAT/pseuds/InsaneKAT
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>'He googles 'blue' and skims down the entire spectrum of colors and their names. He still can't figure out what kind of blue Mike's eyes are.'</p><p> <br/>--<br/>Slightly AU where Mike is a mystery and Harvey is enamored. A two-part love story of two strangers, told in color.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> It took me almost two fucking hours to get all the color swatches in place so pay attention to the swatches. They are important. And very pretty.

To Harvey, New York is perpetually bleached gray. Louis’s charcoal Boss suits. Paperwork. The pavement. The old buildings. Yet, from the tendrils of green that squirm to existence from the brick cracks to the little green sticky notes that Donna favors so much, Harvey finds color. 

Harvey’s sleek shoes are trimmed smartly with the dull lighting within the bar. A dull cadence of hushed conversation thrums comfortingly in the background as he nurses a finger of scotch. 

The click of shoes punctuate the clink of glasses and incessant chatter in the background as a man slides into the seat next to Harvey, surprising him out of his musings. 

The bartender lumbers over and sighs. “ _Mike_. Here to cheat me out of a bottle again?” 

“Oh, Johnny.” Mike mock-sings, hand over his heart. “Why would you ever say that? I thought we had a thing.”

There’s a beat, then the bartender laughs and wipes his hands on the front of his apron. “Good to see you, sonny. Where have you been the past three months?” 

“Oh, here and there,” comes the vague answer. "Can't stay away from New York, always draws me back." 

"Young men like you," says the bartender knowingly. "It's the noise, ainnit?"

"Not really," shrugs Mike. "It's the color that brings me back."

"New York isn't _too_ colorful. The buildings, pfft, boring blocks! You want beauty, I tell you, go to France!" 

Mike gives a quirky grin. "In my experience, finding color is better than having color." 

Harvey is interested. He assesses the casual suit, the worn oxfords. Mike has a mop of sandy hair, a 5 o’clock, and his acceptable suit is paired with a truly atrocious red tie. He’s rather cute. Mike takes out a deck of cards from his wallet and slides out three. The bartender groans. 

"Mike… you're going to put me out of business if you keep this up."

“Oh, you know I can't afford a bottle here. Now come on, you owe me a drink and a game. See the queen? Now you don’t, it’s a sneaky one, but you gotta follow the queen, follow the queen...” 

The man is expertly shifting three downwards-facing cards on the table, one of them presumably a queen. When he stops, the bartender points his finger. The cards are flipped up, and the game is somehow over. 

“I don’t get it!” The bartender growls amiably, offering a cheap beer to Mike. “How’d you do it?” 

Mike laughs a little - a cheery, youthful huff of breath that Harvey finds rather endearing, so Harvey opens his mouth to say something. 

And of course, what comes out of Harvey's mouth is not an invitation to his apartment, but rather, “You slipped the card up your sleeve, obviously.”

Mike starts. He turns to Harvey, blinking. 

The bartender is, as usual, boisterously happy. “Fantastic!” he announces as he tops Harvey’s drink off. "Good game, Mike." 

"Oh, cut it off, you." Mike turns to Harvey as the bartender leaves. "Hey." 

"Hey yourself." 

"You have a good eye. Been staring?" 

"Yes," Harvey says. 

Mike’s smile turns sneaky. He wriggles his fingers at Harvey’s pocket square. “May I?” 

Harvey nods, curious. 

Deft fingers slide up his chest, seductive, and Harvey is suddenly aware of how  _vibrant_  Mike is. Colors, bold brushes across the bland canvas. The blue of his suit, gleaming stripes down the tie, the off-whiteness of his shirt. How the light hits his hair and splits into a thousand different shades. The hues of his irises. 

It's quite a romantic burst of poetry, actually. Harvey forces himself back to reality by sheer force of will. 

Mike is holding the ace of hearts, having “picked” it up from Harvey’s pocket. 

“It was up your sleeve, wasn’t it,” Harvey states blandly.

Mike smiles the most adorable grin that Harvey has ever the pleasure of seeing. “I've been known to be sentimental at times.” 

He stands. “See you around.” Mike slides a piece of paper across the bar and winks before he trails away. Harvey is doomed for the rest of his life. 

The paper is sky blue and crisp. Instead of a number, he finds what looked a little like an incorrectly folded paper mill. There are creases on the edges of two flaps. Harvey follows them with his nails and smiles. 

It isn’t a paper wheel. It’s a blue swallowtail butterfly. 

Harvey waves the bartender over again. “Who was that?” 

The man takes out a rag and starts polishing the already-pristine counter. “Friend of mine, Mike. He does odds and ends for a living. I see he’s left you something, what is it?” 

Harvey shows him the butterfly. The bartender smiles. “That’s nice. I haven’t seen Mike find a friend in forever.” 

"Why? Is he a street magician or something?" 

"Or something," comes the reply. The bartender wipes a glass clean. "He's quite the private individual. Don't scare him away when you next meet him."

"He has a funny way of staying in touch."

"Don't you worry, he'll be contacting you." The bartender tops up Harvey's drink again. "Just you wait. And also," he continues with a deceptively friendly cadence, "if you break him, don't go running to the cops - they can't help you when Mike's buddies are through with you." 

Harvey stares down into the amber depths of his scotch and drinks it in one swallow. 

 

Then he realizes that his pocket square is missing, and damn, isn't that the funniest thing that's happened to him all week. 

 

Harvey doesn’t really wait for Mike. He goes on with his life as usual, beats down pretentious assholes in court, settles deals more often than not, and juggles the internal Pearson Hardman politics as a side bonus.

The world churns on, the color of mercury. 

Because why would he wait for someone he'd talked to for barely five minutes? Mike has the air of someone who flits through life like a carefree bird. Harvey lives his days trying not to get crushed by the white waters and waterfalls. They go opposite directions. 

Yet, even though one lives by the clock and the other by his whims, they meet. 

After a particularly grueling week of court cases, Harvey finds Mike at his hot dog stand. 

"Hello," he says. 

Mike's eyes are laughing as Harvey steals his hot dog shamelessly. "I see life's been treating you well." His hair is still delightfully soft, his eyes intelligent blue. Harvey can't tell what shade. The city swallows him up, mutes him, humbles him, unlike the partial lights of the bar. 

"Fucking court summons." 

Mike huffs again. Mike really likes laughing. He has an easy charm, an approachable air that's refreshing from the tightly wound up New Yorkers. It's clear he's not native, the way he meanders around like a cat, instead of striding purposefully with eyes fixed firmly on the distance without acknowledging the crush of humans. His wrist flicks out, fast, and "snatches" a Joker out from Harvey's files. 

"Give 'em hell," he says, and melts into a crowd as easily as he came. 

Harvey does exactly that, and two weeks later, he gets promoted to an office. 

The first thing he does is have Mike's butterfly framed as a good luck charm to put on a wall. Donna sees it and does not question it at all, but Harvey knows that she knows that he knows, and life is good for a while. 

 

Mike disappears for long stretches of time. 

Harvey goes on with his life. 

 

Mike comes back, one evening. Harvey finds him walking by Pearson Hardman, innocent as a conman. 

"Hey," Mike says. He breaks out into a grin. 

"Hey yourself," Harvey volleys back. "Where have you been for the past…"

"Two months?" finishes Mike. "Here and there. What have you been doing?" 

"This and that," mocks Harvey. "Are you going to be back for a while?" 

"Yeah." Mike glances down at his shoes. The orange of the New York light turn his lashes champagne, his hair into strands of gold. He's thinner, and he's still wearing that atrocious skinny tie that's the same shade as rust. His shirt looks like he's done some working out in it.

Mike whips out a king of diamonds from Harvey's sleeve and a Joker from his pocket. 

Harvey wants so desperately to ask Mike about himself. Instead, he asks, "Are you staying this time?" 

Mike shakes his head. The dark of the night and the nightlife of the city melt into a dirty maroon. "I'm a on-the-move guy. Been to all sorts of places, but I always come back here." 

"New York is where the colors are," says Harvey. 

Mike smiles at him. He looks weary. The shadows make circles under his eyes. "I'll see you around." When he walks down the corner, Harvey notices that he's limping slightly. 

 

When Mike's in the area, he leaves origami for Harvey. Harvey finds most of them if he sticks with a schedule. They're just butterflies at first, but quickly branch out to more adventurous designs. The ashtray on Table 4 at the coffee shop at 1; outside of the courthouse sometimes; the tree outside his apartment when he comes home at 7. The color blue starts to draw his eye immensely quickly.

Harvey's collection of origami keeps on growing: cerulean birds, turquoise flowers, complicated petals of pale blue in intricate patterns. 

 

Some days, Mike drops in on Harvey, draws him away from the stress and pace of life for him to take a breath.

Then one day, after Mike has left Harvey an impossibly intricate ocean-blue mayfly, his hot dog guy gives him a look and tells him, "Dude, stop eyefucking him and go get'im, man. It's pathetic."

Harvey, like Harvey, says, "I don't 'eyefuck'."

"Yeah sure, just like m'Dad don't beat me Mum. Everyone knows Mike 'round here, and the amount of time he spends talking about you? He gonna practically propose t'you. Make a move, Slickity, or loose him." 

Harvey looks at the greasy spatula the guy is waving around, and is suddenly aware of all the times the newspapers and tabloids warn people about food poisoning and suspicious meats from vendors. 

 

Donna gives him a pitying look and hands him a gorgeous midnight lily when he gets to the office. 

"He's nice," she says. "Your little boy." 

"He is," Harvey agrees. "But he's not mine." 

"You could use something nice in your life."

Harvey shrugs. "I don't even know him. I don't even know his last name. I don't know what he likes, I don't know what he even does. He's just…"

"Absolutely head-over-heels for you, and he doesn't give a shit about anything else," cuts in Donna. "Seriously, the look he gave me was heartbreaking when he asked about you. I swear to God, Harvey, if you refuse him…"

"Let me guess," Harvey sighs. "You'll castrate me. Don't worry, Mike's friends have already threatened me."

Donna shakes her head. "Oh please, Harvey. I don't know his last name yet, so I'll only be cutting off one of your balls if you dare break his heart." 

"Donna…"

"Seriously," the red-head turns back to her work. "If you don't make a move soon, he's as good as gone." 

That night, he receives a diamond-blue bird. He can't tell what kind, though. 

 

Some part of him knows that Donna is right, but Harvey's shackled to New York. Mike, however, has the most erratic lifestyle. Harvey still doesn't know what he does. Harvey doesn't even know his last name, or where he came from.

He googles 'blue' and skims down the entire spectrum of colors and their names. He still can't figure out what kind of blue Mike's eyes are. 

 

Harvey takes a day off to look for Mike. He asks around what seems like half of New York's food vendors before a courier overhears him and points him in the direction of Pearson Hardman. 

He finds Mike leaning on a bike across the building, making daisies appear out from behind kids' ears. 

"Hey," says Mike. The kids run off delightedly, grinning and giggling at their flowers. Parents usher the kids away distractedly.

"Hey yourself," says Harvey. 

He doesn't really know what to say next. The silence is rather awkward and uncomfortable. Mike stares at the daisies in his hands and shreds them methodically. New York hums in the background like a beehive.

"Drink?" Harvey asks.

Mike breaks into a bright smile that is relieved and grateful. "Bit early for that. But in the meantime -" and leans in. The side of his five o’clock shadow skims Harvey’s cheek. His lips are slightly chapped, but Harvey cannot care less about that.

They don’t go out for drinks.

Harvey remembers that day very clearly. The sky was gray. Pearson Hardman gleams, a spartan slab of mirror with the sun ricocheting off the edges in blinding white. The pavement under his shoes was gunmetal and ash. Everything was gray. 

Except it wasn't.

Mike's hair was a thousand different colors. Tawny, russet, umber, shades of chocolate brown. Burnt orange and tangerine. Sunlight and cream. The auburn-scarlet-crimson streaks on his tie. The midnight navy of his suit. Harvey's pocket square, which he had pocketed many months ago, is a light sky blue. When Mike reaches up to tangle his fingers in Harvey's hair, Harvey sees a brief glimpse of the ace of hearts tucked in Mike's sleeve, a ruby flash, and then it's gone.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mike's mystery unravels, and so does Harvey. Reality catches up with dreams. 
> 
> In other words: if you want to avoid shit, you have to talk about the right shit at the right time.  
> Also in other words: if you don't want to lie, don't omit either.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again, note color swatches. They are important.

Some things don’t change.

Mike still flits off to places unknown, but only for days at a time instead of weeks now. He still plays with cards and children in the parks while their parents look down at their watches and phones and tap their feet with impatience to hurry him along. He comes at goes sedately, but has Harvey’s schedule down better than Donna does so he can drop in on a whim.

He never spends the night.

Mike never intrudes on Harvey’s work, somehow navigates and skirts around the busy days and the wearying hours, slipping through the cracks like water. He also never asks about Harvey at all, and Harvey never asks about Mike in return.

They don’t talk much. Some nights, they play cards. Harvey puts on jazz that he falls asleep to and wakes up alone to. It’s okay, actually. Quiet. They hold each other silently, nuzzling at lapels, aware of every shift, the other's presence.

Other things do change.

Mike’s smiles are less playful and, somehow, more somber. When he smiles at Harvey adoringly, it's never all sunshine. His eyes are sad. In retrospect, the rest of his body seems to be hyperactive every time they meet, constantly stretching, bouncing, tensing, twitching, shifting.

Harvey smiles a little more now, less sharply. His shoulders aren’t as stiff. He still doesn’t laugh much, but from time to time, his eyes do.

It’s peaceful. And fine.

Harvey's days are spent in the office, with the sky-blue swallowtail butterfly on his wall, keeping him company vigilantly. Some nights are spent working; others are just hours and hours trying to memorize the swatches of _Mike_ in the minimalistic lighting.

Sometimes, Mike’s eyes are aquamarine, almost transparent-light. Other times they’re lavender, or iris, or one of the purple flowers out there. It depends on the television channel, really. Mike picks. But all, somehow, with the same underlying shade of blue in them that Harvey could never name.

 

Once, Harvey actually hisses at Donna when she reaches for his butterfly, only to realize that she just wants to straighten it. He draws back and pretends that he didn’t do anything.

She notices, but lets it slide and brushes lint off the glass instead. “One of Mike’s.”

“The first one.”

“It’s the same shade as his eyes,” Donna comments, offhandedly.

That night, a CNN report about stolen artifacts from a museum tint Mike’s eyes as red as the coral reefs. Bullshit. It’s not the same color at all.

 

 

“Let me take you out,” says Mike one day.

Harvey looks over at his walking enigma. The mysterious stranger that he fell in love with, that he barely knows. The white lights turn Mike's hair into shades of tree bark. A mediocre suit, a scar on his cheek.  Harvey sees _Mike_ , and Mike is beautiful. He feels his ribs ache at how much he _wants_. 

“Okay,” he agrees.

Mike takes him out for dinner, a tiny corner undiscovered by the tides of New York. The evening moves slowly, like time trapped in amber gold.

Both of them eat cheap food and drink expensive wine and they giggle like children as the city roars around them, a swirl of burgundy and apricot, shades of black and brown. They doodle on the napkins with Harvey's montblanc, the one that he uses to sign important documents, but is now used to draw terrible stick men having mock battles across flimsy paper.

They don’t talk about much. Their legs are tangled together, cherished touches softening corners and sharp edges, molding them into something more malleable, more together.

Harvey presses his lips to Mike’s cheek gently, and Mike smiles his strange sad smile.

The rest of the night passes like a dream.

 

An art history documentary turns Mike’s hair a light yellow, the color of candlelight on white walls, when he turns and whispers an apology into Harvey’s ear. Harvey falls asleep on Mike and wakes up alone.

Mike doesn’t come back for almost month this time.

 

Harvey moves on with his life. His suits go beyond immaculate, sharp and brutal as the noises and turns of the New York subway, as the edges of the Pearson Hardman building. His words are frigid oyster forks. Everyone notices.

He wakes up to charcoal coffee and falls asleep to scotch that tastes like sawdust on his tongue.

 

When Mike does come back, he has a tiny scar on his forehead, a tad darker than the rest of his skin, the color of knitted flesh. His eyes are steel blue, just like the color of the Pearson Hardman building that day.

“Mike,” Harvey says as he sees the familiar figure lurking around the building.

“Harvey,” Mike brushes his cheek across Harvey’s, nuzzling like a cat. He smells like the smoke of the city and the walls of a new apartment – both toxic and intoxicating. Even with Harvey's eyes closed, something about Mike still reminds him of colors. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Harvey whispers back, carding his fingers through Mike’s umber hair. They stand in front of the shark tank, breathing promises to each other, for as long as Harvey dares.

“I’m sorry,” Mike whispers into the nook of Harvey’s neck. People swirl about them, smoky blue as Mike’s eyes.

Louis catches him in the break room, fixing himself a cup of coffee the same shade as Mike’s shoes.

“You know, the Associates are talking a lot about you today,” mentions Louis with deliberate casualness, flashing his atrocious teeth in the process. When Harvey keeps silent, Louis continues, “Aren’t you curious about what they’re talking about?”

“No,” said Harvey.

“They’re saying,” Louis barrels on, _how rude of him_ , “that you’ve got yourself a little someone outside the firm, and the little someone is rather male.”

Harvey did not want to deal with this shit right now. “If you’re one of those closet homophobes, bring it up with Jessica.”

“What?” Louis calls at his retreating back. “No stories? No gloating? No jokes about my nonexistent wife?”

“What do you want me to say?”

Louis looks like an ugly fat cat paws-deep in cream. “The Harvey Specter I know would be prancing around the whole floor gloating about his new eye candy. I want to know what’s going on.”

“Nothing’s going on,” Harvey says, calm and even, and leaves Louis, just like that.

Which is what he says to Jessica Pearson two days later when he answers a question of a similar manner. She stares him down in a dress the shade of too much cream in latte before she dismisses him.

 

He copes. He lives. He moves on.

Things are good for a while.

 

Harvey walks into the apartment one day to the sight of Mike reading through one of his science fiction novels that he had slotted, almost forgotten, into a corner of his bookcase. Words slip out from his tongue, “Let me take you out.”

Mike looks over. He smiles, and says, “I’ll like that.”

Harvey makes them dinner at home, slightly burnt quiche from scratch and ridiculously sweet brownies from a mix. They spend the evening laughing.

Later that night, however, he brings Mike out to a bar.

“I met you at this bar,” exclaims Mike delightedly.

Harvey shrugs. He’s a romantic, after all. A closeted one.

Johnny the bartender laughs his rumbling laugh and Mike ropes people into playing card games with him all night. Harvey stands back and watches the gleeful, almost childish Mike rack up everyone else’s peanuts like he’s stockpiling for winter.

 _It’s the color that brings me back_ , Harvey remembers. _Finding color is better than having color_.

The bar is smoky and the lights are as soft as Mike’s hair. Harvey closes his eyes. Mike's eyes could be firebrick red, pumpkin orange, mint green, but it doesn’t matter at all.

Harvey doesn't need to find color anymore.

He has color now.

He has Mike now.

Things are good.

 

Things are very good for a while.

 

Mike whispers another apology during the middle of a _Law and Order_ rerun. Harvey wakes up to a cold couch, alone.

 

Life goes on.

 

There's no difference, except that he is aware at how world seems more faded, washed out, bleached lavenders and misty blue, and he feels keenly constant nagging sensation of an emptiness similar to hunger but not quite that.

 

Mike’s visits grow shorter.

He smiles a lot less, seems more weary and wary. Harvey tries his best, but he doesn’t know what’s wrong. He doesn't know anything.

They talk less now, and when Harvey does, Mike just whispers to him platitudes and promises and pleas until Harvey relents and lets the drone of whatever Mike chooses to watch wash over them.

Harvey feels his silence like a hook he swallowed, twisting up his gut tighter with worry and suspicion every time he tried to pull it out. The quiet, the words that _should have could have would have_ been spoken hangs heavy like lead between them. It’s comfortable enough, but also with a tension. Anticipation. Words have power.

“Mike,” he says one day, and cuts off Mike’s usual tirade of avoidance with a more insistent, “ _Mike_.”

Mike doesn’t respond the second time. He curls away from Harvey and into the pillow, a subtle shift in motion that Harvey catches immediately.

“Who are you, Mike?” Harvey asks.

Mike looks at the television. The images shift over his eyes like watery tears. _The Daily Show_ ’s auburn-denim combination mashes together into a dingy eggplant in his irises

“Harvey,” Mike says. “One more day. Please.”

Mike doesn’t even look at him, just burrows into Harvey’s side and doesn’t say another word.

Harvey watches Colbert and Stewart fool around in the studio again. It doesn’t seem as funny as it’s supposed to be. To think people actually voted for him back in 2008.

 

It happens again.

And again.

And again.

 

Things go on. The world keeps on spinning, and if Harvey concentrates enough, he can feel it move beneath his feet.

 

 

When Mike slips into the apartment in the ungodly hours of the rosewood night, he finds the lights on and Harvey waiting for him.

It’s gone on long enough.

“Who are you, Mike?”

Mike stares at him blearily. “Harvey…”

“Mike,” Harvey says. His voice almost breaks in the middle, but instead it just wobbles. Slightly. He knows Mike can hear it, sees him glancing down guiltily at his worn shoes. Some of his Pearson Hardman self leeks into his voice. “Answer the question.”

“I’m sorry,” Mike whispers, and moves into the stark whiteness of Harvey’s kitchen light. His shoulder is wrapped heavily, and the butterfly bandage on his finger is pristine white. He repeats, “Harvey,” like it’s a prayer, a plea.

His eyes are the color of the kitchen table – shades of morning fog on a lake, but sharper, deeper, more melancholy.

Harvey, perhaps against his better judgement, decides to lean in, sliding his arms around Mike. Mike puts his head on Harvey’s shoulder and whispers into his shirt. Harvey can hear apologies, repeated over and over again like hymns; he can feel Mike shaking. He can feel regret.

“Not today, Mike. Please,” Harvey presses but his resolve weakens, “Who are you?”

Mike trembles in his grip. There is no answer for a while.

Then he heard Mike whisper _I’m so sorry. I promise. I promise I’ll tell you, just not today._

The words were like weights as Mike repeats them, speeding up and stumbling on the words. The light turns his hair into dirt. Harvey listens and holds Mike as he finally chokes off his lead-filled promises into sobbing heaves.

 _I promise_. Harvey hears between the trembling. _I promise I promise oh my god im so sorry harvey please just one more night please just don’t let me go let me forget please please harve-_

 

The next day, Mike disappears.

 

It’s a slow ache, measured in the crispness of his suit and the lines of his shirt. The weight of his shoes. The number of steps it takes him to the nearest subway.

Donna stops him at the reception one day and demands to know _what the hell got your balls all twisted_. Harvey looks at her and says the first thing that comes to mind.

“I don’t know.” He doesn’t know what else to say.

Donna looks worried. “What happened between you two?”

“I don’t know.”

She leans her hip on the counter. “Harvey…. what happened to Mike?”

Harvey stares into her eyes and repeats, “ _I don’t know_.”

Donna looks at him. "Sonofabitch." She turns and walks out of the office quickly.

 _Good girl_ , Harvey thinks proudly to himself. _She gets it._

 

This time, Mike doesn’t reappear.

 

Time trudges on with all the viscosity of tar.

 

Harvey still gets the firm a fuck ton of money. He still loves his job. He’s still as professional and cordial and appropriately sneaky as ever. Just… less so. Of course, people notice immediately.

In some ways, Harvey notices the differences too. He’s mellowed out in some areas, and his temper fuse is basically nonexistent. He’s more professional and detached during court cases. His pride and smugness no longer permeate the very air he breathes.

In some ways, he’s gotten a little number, a little less Harvey and a little more humble. One could call it _maturing_.

Jessica is so worried she calls him in.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” is how she greets him.

“Hello, Jessica. Lovely to meet you too, Jessica. Yes, I have been quite busy, and this is a _very_ inconvenient time, so I’ll just be going.”

“Cut the crap, Slick.” Jessica puts down her cup. “There is something off about you. You sick or something?”

Harvey takes a seat. “There is nothing _off_ about me.”

“You’re twenty years too young to be pulling the wool over my eyes, sonny. You know exactly what’s going on.”

“People can change, you know.”

“You don’t.”

“But I do, Jessica.” Harvey checks his watch discreetly. “And I might have. It’s not too hard to believe. The world isn’t set in stone.”

She scrutinizes him carefully, and Harvey wonders distractedly, not for the first time, if she really does have X-ray vision. Far, far, away from this isolated corner of the office, the traffic blares.

“Something’s not just off,” she observes. “Something’s very wrong.”

_Damn the woman._

“I’m right, aren’t I?” she says smugly. “Something’s wrong and you don’t actually know _what_. Or you can't fix it. The great Harvey Specter, brought to his knees by something as small as being human.”

“Everything’s fine.” Harvey replies. “I’m handling it fine.”

“Bullshit,” Jessica sings out. “I would care less what kind of problem it is so as long as you fix it, Harvey. I’m not keeping you around so you can mope about the firm.”

“I told you, I’m handling it. None of my clients dropped out, I’m still bringing in the big stacks. Isn’t that what you hired me for?”

“I hired you because I saw _fire_ ,” Jessica hisses at him. “And when I look at you I see someone who’s lost the very reason why he got through Harvard and this job. You’ve lost your passion, your will, and just you wait. It’s going to drag you down like you wouldn’t believe. And I can’t save you then.”

Harvey stares at her. He’s lost the ability to get angry, really.

She waves her perfectly manicured hands at him and picks up her tea again. “I know you have a meeting to go to. Fix your shit up, or I'll take it out on your ass and your paycheck.”

 

Louis stops him one day in the hallways and says frankly, “This moping about is getting out of hand.”

“I have no idea what you’re saying.”

Louis gives him one look that says _no matter how stupid you think I am, I got through Harvard too don’t you fool me._ “Whatever it is, I’m just going to say that I’m not going to stop competing against you, no matter what. This is a dog eat dog world, and if you’ve got a limp, you get put down.”

“Why Louis, I didn’t think you cared.”

“You’re bleeding, Harvey.” Louis says bluntly, full of weasel-like candor. “And people are noticing. I’m not the only one gunning for your job.”

Harvey stares at him tiredly. “Go away, Louis.”

 

Donna takes down the blue butterfly in his office one day, probably because she notices that he can't stand to touch it, can't stand to even stare at it.

Harvey flips shit for the first time in months. It's a quiet, permeating panic, like hypothermia.

She sees him wearing a hole into the carpet that might have drilled down to the IT floor that afternoon and doesn’t say a thing.

The butterfly is restored after he comes back from his coffee break.

 

The box of origami sits in the corner of his expensive living room that feels too big and too cold, even though he’s rich enough to afford heating.

It’s not about the money.

 

He loses his first client, a musician. Not a big deal, really, he wasn’t terribly important. Harvey doesn’t care too much. The violist tells him this over dinner, bites of ashy steak and powdery potatoes. It’s expensive, and Harvey basically listens and nods a lot throughout the entire thing.

By the end of the night he’s slightly drunk. Once he’s reached his condo he reaches two fingers down his throat and washes away the stale taste of the night.

When he stares into the mirror, empty eyes stare back. A corpse. His bathroom light reminds him of hospitals.

 

The days blend together.

 

 

Then one day, as he is heading home with Ray, Donna brings him the first piece of news on Mike that Harvey has heard in a year.

It isn't a call, but a text.

Harvey didn't even look at it. He got texts all the times. He'll just check them once he gets back to his condo and collapses onto his empty couch to watch trash TV.

The texts continue coming, insistent buzzing like flies.

He finally checks. It's from Donna.

His ribs feel like they're clenching on his lungs. He can't breathe. 

Eleven texts, all with the same message.

_Mike w FBI come ASAP!!!_

Mike.

_Mike w FBI come ASAP!!!_

Mike.

_Mike w FBI come ASAP!!!_

Mike. Mike!

Harvey does a double take and swears before snapping at Ray about the change of plans. His sleek black car rams through the New York traffic, cleaving through the concrete gray smog. For a while, all he sees are the neon tails of taxis and ruby lights flashing by as Ray guns the gas.

The car can’t go fast enough for Harvey.

 

 

He is waved through security and up the twenty-odd floors on a creaky elevator that jolts dangerously when it stops and then shown into an office before he is finally led to a room and by this time Harvey can hardly _breathe_ hardly _see_ can barely even hear his muted footsteps on the spotless floor.

But all of a sudden he feels himself freeze, because right there, less than ten meters ahead of him, in a small chair and clad in bitingly cruel handcuffs, sits Mike.

Harvey would have run to him, but instead he just stands there and stares at Mike through the glass.

“He wanted a _lawyer_ ,” an officer explained to Harvey as he unlocks the heavy metal door. “He says he’ll confess fully and plead guilty if he just gets to talk to you.”

“What did Mike do?” Harvey says. Demands. No, _says_. He still feels dazed. The door screeches over his words as it opens.

“I don’t know what he’s been telling you, but he sure isn’t named Mike. No funny business, we’ll be watching.” The officer turns and walks out of the room, leaving Harvey with Mike and the sinking silence.

Mike looks back up.

Their eyes meet.

A pause. It is so quiet Harvey can hear his watch tick.

Tick tock tick tock.

Mike looks down.

Tick tock.

Tick.

Tock.

Then Mike looks down and crumbles before Harvey’s imploring gaze.

He cries.

Mike is somehow a stranger now. A different man. His hair is much longer, curled and messy and darker, retaining hints of being coiffed recently. A bloody lip, a bruised cheekbone, shades of gunmetal blue and black, the rest of his skin white and ghastly as the room. His stubble is trimmed into something sleeker, classier.

Mike’s casual clothes and bad taste in midnight blue suits are replaced with sleek black lines, too sleek, too expensive for the Mike that Harvey knows to afford. But despite this, Harvey can see the remnants of a scuffle. Lost buttons. A torn elbow. Dirty knees.

Harvey asks softly, gently, the question he has been asking for too long. It doesn’t come out easily. Mike doesn’t seem to hear. He repeats it, louder, harsher.

“Who are you, Mike?”

And the stranger tells him.

 

His name is not Mike. It’s not Joshua, not Nick, not Alexander. His name is not Neal Caffrey, either, but it’s the one that everyone seems to know. Harvey’s heard of the name, of course. A famous name. A faceless criminal with a breadcrumb trail.

Neal Caffrey’s an art thief, a forger, a fence, and a magician. He’s a performer. A cheater. An artist. He's all of them, some of them, none of them, depending on who you ask.

And no matter how far he presses, Harvey still manages to dig some niche of Mike’s – _Neal’s_ – history out onto the stainless steel table.

In the next half-hour, he pries and he carves and learns more about the man he loves - loved? - than he does in two years of murmurs and silence.

The table was the color of bullets and cadet uniforms.

He learns about the running that Mike does in between the long nights of silence and television, why he seemed to do anything but sleep and cuddle in front of the television, forcing Harvey’s blinds shut despite the stunning view of New York.

He learns about the pieces Mike stole, the paintings he’d forged, and the games he played when Harvey was locked in a glass building of an aquarium. Why Mike always smelt like the toxic of New York. It’s not exhaust. It’s paint.

Harvey can feel something shredding. It feels like his diaphragm. Maybe it’s his stomach. It can most definitely not be his heart.

He learns about the cuts and the scrapes and near-misses and the hits and all that Mike does, an entire world that Harvey lived on but never saw a glimpse of. He learns about why Mike always liked to watch art channels.

He learns why Mike never stays.

He learns why Mike always leaves.

Mike had never even respected or trusted him enough with the full picture. He had taken willingly and given willingly, but he had never given all. Harvey did not pick up Mike. Harvey had merely caught Mike’s eye, and Mike had picked up Harvey, let him into his life like another jigsaw puzzle.

It’s unfair. The lack of reciprocity is _unfair_.

And yet, at the same time, Harvey still loves him. 

And despite all of this, Harvey feels hurt that he has never been told, but he feels grateful that he at least been spared from having to choose between his mores and Mike.

 _A forger._ Harvey thinks to himself. _Mike’s a forger, a thief. A criminal. You put people like him behind bars, Harvey._

_Mike’s a conman._

He turns around.

“Harvey…” Mike says, but whatever he wants to say he cuts off. “I’m sorry,” he says instead. He sounds sad. Harvey wonders bitterly how much of it Mike actually means.

The doors bite into the ground into a screech, and Harvey steps out from the room with the guards. Beyond the guilty gaze of this stranger, he turns back towards the room where Mike slumps on the chair, desolate.

One last look.

 

_This is the man that you never knew, Harvey._

_This is not Mike._

_He conned you._

_But you love him._

_You love him so much you would go blind with it._

And with that realization, Harvey _sees_ it.

“Oh my god,” he whispers to himself. _Oh my god._

Mike’s eyes. In the dull light of the colorless room, Harvey _sees_ it.

They were never blue at all.

_No no no no no no nonononono...._

Iciness, and a distinct feeling of tilting. He takes a harsh breath of the recycled air and it smells like copper or plastic and lies. Then all of a sudden, he can’t seem to blink, he can’t _think_. The coldness spread. All of a sudden Harvey feels weak.

New York. The color of the skies, the pavement, Louis’s suits.

_Mike’s eyes._

Harvey stares into Mike’s gray eyes, the dirty smudges of charcoal. He stares into the depths of a hidden city within Mike’s silver-mercury- _gray, **gray**_ eyes, and a small part of his mind wonders if this is what betrayal feels like.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> EDIT: Some people have requested closure and a happier ending. I think, however, the entire intent of the story is not to paint a rococo fairy tale but rather something brutally simple. Harvey is Mike's escape, just as Mike is Harvey's escape. But love should not just be an escape, yes? 
> 
> Perhaps if enough people request it of me, I will grudgingly oblige with an actual written ending. But I am willing to extend a slightly bittersweet ending for your closure. 
> 
> Neal "Mike" Caffrey is released under the custody of the FBI and Peter Burke. His anklet radius limit falls just shy of Pearson Hardman. When he is finally released four years later, he walks across his radius and stands on the pavement across the law office where he first kissed Harvey. From there, he watches where across the street Harvey Specter kisses Dana "Scottie" Specter on the front steps of Pearson Specter. He watches Harvey's smile, his laugh, his eyes. Harvey's fingers, intertwined with Scottie's. Their matching rings, simple and unobtrusive.
> 
> Mike turns and slips into the crowd, because the only way he can love Harvey now is to let him go. He leaves with Peter Burke, his wife, a promise to visit June, and Mozzie to Washington two weeks later.


End file.
